Habit 1 Be Proactive Quotes

Habit 1: Be Proactive Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind Habit 3: Put First Things First Habit 4: Think Win/Win Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood Habit 6: Synergize Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.” Personal responsibility, or proactivity, is fundamental to the first creation. Returning to the computer metaphor, Habit 1 says, “You are the programmer.” Habit 2, then, says, “Write the program.

PRIVATE VICTORY Habit 1 1. Pause and respond based on principles and desired results. 2. Use proactive language. 3. Focus on your Circle of Influence. 4. Become a Transition Person. Habit 2 5. Define outcomes before you act. 6. Create and live by a personal mission statement. Habit 3 7. Focus on your highest priorities. 8. Eliminate the unimportant. 9. Plan every week. 10. Stay true in the moment of choice. PUBLIC VICTORY 11. Build your Emotional Bank Account with others. Habit 4 12. Have an Abundance Mentality. 13. Balance courage and consideration. 14. Consider other people’s wins as well as your own. 15. Create Win-Win Agreements. Habit 5 16. Practice Empathic Listening. 17. Respectfully seek to be understood. Habit 6 18. Value differences. 19. Seek 3rd Alternatives. Habit 7 20. Achieve the Daily Private Victory. 21. Balance production and production capability.

Habits are as follows: Habit 1: Be Pro-active – I thought of a Bee that is a pro-golfer. That picture should be enough to trigger habit 1. Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind – The brain is running a race, and looking at the end in mind. Habit 3: Put First Things First – the man is in 1st position, putting first things first. Habit 4: Think Win/Win – the two trophies show that everyone wins with win/win. Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be

It's stupid to wake up with $0.00 in your pocket and realize your life is in shambles. Might as well be proactive and realize it pretty much already sucks. When you have $500-$1,000 cash* left, you can consider yourself homeless. *I consider $500-$1,000 enough for one year. So it's best to come up with $500-$1,000 more after each year you do this. 2) Next, pick up cheap habits.

The more proactive you are (Habit 1), the more effectively you can exercise personal leadership (Habit 2) and management (Habit 3) in your life. The more effectively you manage your life (Habit 3), the more Quadrant II renewing activities you can do (Habit 7). The more you seek first to understand (Habit 5), the more effectively you can go for synergetic Win/Win solutions (Habits 4 and 6). The more you improve in any of the habits that lead to independence (Habits 1, 2, and 3), the more effective you will be in interdependent situations (Habits 4, 5, and 6). And renewal (Habit 7) is the process of renewing all the habits.

The Abundance Mentality takes the personal joy, satisfaction, and fulfillment of Habits 1, 2, and 3 and turns it outward, appreciating the uniqueness, the inner direction, the proactive nature of others.

1: Be Proactive

The primary human endowments are 1) self-awareness or self-knowledge; 2) imagination and conscience; and 3) volition or willpower. The secondary endowments are 4) an abundance mentality; 5) courage and consideration; and 6) creativity. The seventh endowment is self-renewal. All are unique human endowments; animals don’t possess any of them. But they are all on a continuum of low to high levels. • Associated with Habit 1: Be Proactive is the endowment of self-knowledge or self-awareness—an ability to choose your response (response-ability). At the low end of the continuum are the ineffective people who transfer responsibility by blaming other people, events, or the environment—anything or anybody “out there” so that they are not responsible for results. If I blame you, in effect I have empowered you. I have given my power to your weakness. Then I can create evidence that supports my perception that you are the problem. At the upper end of the continuum toward increasing effectiveness is self-awareness: “I know my tendencies, I know the scripts or programs that are in me, but I am not those scripts. I can rewrite my scripts.” You are aware that you are the creative force of your life. You are not the victim of conditions or conditioning. You can choose your response to any situation, to any person. Between what happens to you and your response is a degree of freedom. And the more you exercise that freedom, the larger it will become. As you work in your circle of influence and exercise that freedom, gradually you will stop being a “hot reactor” (meaning there’s little separation between stimulus and response) and start being a cool, responsible chooser—no matter what your genetic makeup, no matter how you were raised, no matter what your childhood experiences were or what the environment is. In your freedom to choose your response lies the power to achieve growth and happiness.

It was not the luck of being at the right moment in history that separated Bill Gates, but his proactive response to being at the right moment (Habit 1: Be Proactive).

The problems we face fall in one of three areas: direct control (problems involving our own behavior); indirect control (problems involving other people’s behavior); or no control (problems we can do nothing about, such as our past or situational realities). The proactive approach puts the first step in the solution of all three kinds of problems within our present Circle of Influence. Direct control problems are solved by working on our habits. They are obviously within our Circle of Influence. These are the “Private Victories” of Habits 1, 2, and 3. Indirect control problems are solved by changing our methods of influence. These are the “Public Victories” of Habits 4, 5, and 6. I have personally identified over 30 separate methods of human influence—as separate as empathy is from confrontation, as separate as example is from persuasion. Most people have only three or four of these methods in their repertoire, starting usually with reasoning, and, if that doesn’t work, moving to flight or fight. How liberating it is to accept the idea that I can learn new methods of human influence instead of constantly trying to use old ineffective methods to “shape up” someone else! No control problems involve taking the responsibility to change the line on the bottom of our face—to smile, to genuinely and peacefully accept these problems and learn to live with them, even though we don’t like them. In this way, we do not empower these problems to control us. We share in the spirit embodied in the Alcoholics Anonymous prayer, “Lord, give me the courage to change the things which can and ought to be changed, the serenity to accept the things which cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Whether a problem is direct, indirect, or no control, we have in our

Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People so you can more effectively implement his Seven Habits in your everyday life. First, be clear about what it is you’re trying to remember. Here are the Seven Habits, with brief descriptions in case you’re unfamiliar with the book: Habit 1: Be proactive. Take responsibility, and don’t wait for problems to happen before taking action. Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind. Envision your future so you can create a plan and work toward your goal. Habit 3: Put first things first. Prioritize the things that are important (have long-term impacts) but not urgent. Habit 4: Think win/win. Strive for mutually beneficial solutions. Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Listen empathetically to promote positive problem solving. Habit 6: Synergize. Teamwork will allow you to achieve goals you couldn’t have achieved alone. Habit 7: Sharpen the saw. Foster good habits by balancing your resources, energy, and health to achieve a sustainable lifestyle.

Table of Contents Part One: Paradigms and Principles INSIDE-OUT THE 7 HABITS—AN OVERVIEW Part TWO: PRIVATE VICTORY HABIT 1: BE PROACTIVE ® HABIT 2: BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND ® HABIT 3: PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST ® Part Three: public victory PARADIGMS OF INTERDEPENDENCE ® HABIT 4: THINK WIN/ WIN ®

As I reflect upon some of the exceptional leaders I’ve studied in my research, I’m struck by how Covey’s principles are manifested in many of their stories. Let me focus on one of my favorite cases, Bill Gates. It’s become fashionable in recent years to attribute the outsize success of someone like Bill Gates to luck, to being in the right place at the right time. But if you think about it, this argument falls apart. When Popular Electronics put the Altair computer on its cover, announcing the advent of the first-ever personal computer, Bill Gates teamed up with Paul Allen to launch a software company and write the BASIC programming language for the Altair. Yes, Gates was at just the right moment with programming skills, but so were other people—students in computer science and electrical engineering at schools like Cal Tech, MIT, and Stanford; seasoned engineers at technology companies like IBM, Xerox, and HP; and scientists in government research laboratories. Thousands of people could’ve done what Bill Gates did at that moment, but they didn’t. Gates acted upon the moment. He dropped out of Harvard, moved to Albuquerque (where the Altair was based), and wrote computer code day and night. It was not the luck of being at the right moment in history that separated Bill Gates, but his proactive response to being at the right moment (Habit 1: Be Proactive).

Personal responsibility, or proactivity, is fundamental to the first creation. Returning to the computer metaphor, Habit 1 says, “You are the programmer.” Habit 2, then, says, “Write the program.” Until you accept the idea that you are responsible, that you are the programmer, you won’t really invest in writing the program.

Habit 1: Be proactive. Take responsibility, and don’t wait for problems to happen before taking action. Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind. Envision your future so you can create a plan and work toward your goal. Habit 3: Put first things first. Prioritize the things that are important (have long-term impacts) but not urgent. Habit 4: Think win/win. Strive for mutually beneficial solutions. Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Listen empathetically to promote positive problem solving. Habit 6: Synergize. Teamwork will allow you to achieve goals you couldn’t have achieved alone. Habit 7: Sharpen the saw. Foster good habits by balancing your resources, energy, and health to achieve a sustainable lifestyle.

Habit 1: Be proactive. Take responsibility, and don’t wait for problems to happen before taking action. Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind. Envision your future so you can create a plan and work toward your goal. Habit 3: Put first things first. Prioritize the things that are important (have long-term impacts) but not urgent. Habit 4: Think win/win. Strive for mutually beneficial solutions. Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Listen empathetically to promote positive problem solving. Habit 6: Synergize. Teamwork will allow you to achieve goals you couldn’t have achieved alone. Habit 7: Sharpen the saw. Foster good habits by balancing your resources, energy, and health to achieve a sustainable lifestyle. While these concepts should be applied every day, in everything you do, on their own, they can be challenging to remember. By using the car method, remembering the Seven Habits becomes easy and fun. Here is a picture of a car with seven images on it to represent the Seven Habits.